The Pontiac Township High School Board of Education met and set its levy of $2.95 million at Monday night’s Pontiac Township High School Board of Education meeting.

Superintendent Jon Kilgore said he expects the overall expenditures to be around $14.2 million with $10.5 million being revenue. Kilgore said around 61percent of the revenue received will come mostly from the property tax levy. The state, on the other hand, is only funding 27 percent.

“The overall result of revenue being down and some expenditures being up is creating a larger deficit balance from last year,” Kilgore said. “We knew that the expenses would be up because we just completed our building project. We didn’t, however, expect that revenues from the state would be down, so that has created a little bit of a deficit.

“Even though the budget was a deficit budget overall, if you look at our fund and cash balances, those are still positive.”

In general state aid, District 90 was pro-rated to receive only 89 percent of what it is owed from the state. Kilgore said this percentage is forecast to go down even more next year depending on how things are further pro-rated.

This year’s levy is meant to address four major obligations for the district, including the education fund, transportation fund, the operations and maintenance fund and debt services. Kilgore said these four areas would make up the majority of the money received from this year’s levy with the education fund being the primary obligation.

Kilgore said the average annual amount for the education fund is $7.5 million over the last five years. He also said the education fund this year appears higher as it topped out at $7.9 million.

However, Kilgore said this increase is due to a cost incurred during the separation of the Livingston Area Career Center and the high school’s accounting practices.

“The bulk of that difference between our five-year average and this year’s amount is an increase in expenditures of about $450,000. However, it evens out in the overall budget because it increases the revenues, as well,” said Kilgore.

As a result of the levy, Kilgore said this year’s property tax rate is projected to be 2.42 percent, which is an increase of 0.13 percent over last year’s 2.29 percent rate with the life safety bonds included. Kilgore said the bonds would raise the tax rate 13 cents until they come off the table.

This year’s rate is a combination of the equalized assessed value of properties going down from $2.24 million to $2.19 million, but the Consumer Price Index going up.

Page 2 of 2 - “We recognize this increase and if we can shift away from property taxes a little bit and put our focus toward a consumption based tax, like the proposed 1 percent sales tax increase, we can get away from some burden on property taxes,” Kilgore said. “If PTHS were to be getting funds from the sales tax, which is only used for facilities and life safety bonds, we can pay those off two years early and we could get that 13 cents removed from property taxes.”

Potential exists for people who live within District 429 and District 90 to see their property taxes could go down 28 cents if we get this sales tax passed.